“A provocative—and convincing—account of how the conception of modernity became a vital means to political action and legitimacy in nineteenth-century France.”

—Benjamin Franklin Martin, Katheryn J., Lewis C., and Benjamin Price Professor of History at Louisiana State University and author of France in 1938

“A serious and ambitious work that will inspire a great deal of debate, which I imagine will last some time. The author is a talented thinker.”

—William Gallois, associate professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean history at the University of Exeter and author of A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony